The main-money-stream, lucre driven, pulp-word peddlers of darkness are criminally bound to follow the lust for money.

Wherever the plunder of the truth lures them, that is where they will go (all the way to catastrophe for a buck), because they are part of the corruption that is making civilization extinct for the first time, while making the life in the ecosystem extinct for the sixth time (We Are Riding Out The Sixth Mass Extinction?).

II. The Inequality of False Framing

Some things are not debatable in the real world, yet the presstitution trance perpetuates the false debate about whether or not the Earth is flat whether global warming induced climate change is happening because of fossil fuel use:

[O]nce a scientific issue is closed, there's only one "side." Imagine providing a "balance" to the issue of whether the Earth orbits the Sun, whether continents move, or whether DNA carries genetic information. These matters were long ago settled in scientists' minds. Nobody can publish an article in a scientific journal claiming the Sun orbits the Earth. ...
The professional canon of journalistic fairness requires reporters who write about a controversy to present competing points of view. When the issue is of a political or social nature, fairness - presenting the most compelling arguments of both sides with equal weight - is a fundamental check on biased reporting. But this canon causes problems when it is applied to issues of science. It seems to demand that journalists present competing points of views on a scientific question as though they had equal scientific weight, when actually they do not....
The scientific method requires objective analysis of all data, stating evidence pro and con, before reaching conclusions. This works well, indeed is necessary, for achieving success in science. But science is now pitted in public debate against the talk-show method, which consists of selective citation of anecdotal bits that support a predetermined position. Why is the public presented results of the scientific method and the talk-show method as if they deserved equal respect?...
The book argues that of all the factors that have led to this crisis, none is more important than the failure of America's mainstream media. The following excerpt, after introducing this issue, discusses one of the most important dimensions of the media's failure. The book was published before The Guardian, which had all along provided the best coverage, began its climate-change campaign, referring to the threat from climate change as "the biggest story in the world."

The harms associated with climate change are serious and well recognized. The Government’s own objective assessment of the relevant science and a strong consensus among qualified experts indicate that global warming threatens, inter alia, a precipitate rise in sea levels, severe and irreversible changes to natural ecosystems, a significant reduction in winter snowpack with direct and important economic consequences, and increases in the spread of disease and the ferocity of weather events.

I came across the long answer while writing some software for sea level rise (SLR) projections.

It dawned on me what one of the, if not the, most pressing dangers to what we call civilization really is.

I mean, I came across one obvious damage scenario that is near term, not far off, not something that will not affect the lives of most people living today ("Anyone between 25 and 29 is already older than most of the people in the world" - At What Age Am I Older Than Most People?).

SLR modelling software projects SLR of ~1meter or ~3 ft. in the lifetimes of most of the people of the world:

The increasing Greenland mass loss ... can be fit just as well by exponentially increasing annual mass loss, a behavior that Hansen (2005, 2007) argues could occur because of multiple amplifying feedbacks as an ice sheet begins to disintegrate. A 10-year doubling time would lead to 1 meter sea level rise by 2067 ... 2045 ... for 5-year doubling time and 2055 ... for a 7-year doubling time....
Where I have differed was not to focus on "doubling" per se, but rather on rate of acceleration:

Notice that the ~3 ft. SLR takes place circa 2042 in these projected 14.87% -> 4.37% and 14.87% -> 4.08% acceleration details, rather than taking place circa 2100 as the IPCC projection expects.

What happens after 2042 in the graph indicates catastrophic SLR, if the current melt acceleration of 14.87% continues for perhaps another decade or so, as it has since 2009 until now.

Like I said though, it should decrease naturally as the "low hanging fruit" ice near the coasts of Greenland and W. Antarctica melt away, leaving only the more stable inland ice.

(Will This Float Your Boat - 5). This (2042) is quite close to "2045 ... for 5-year doubling time" as written by Hansen, Sato (2012) and quoted above.

"By volume, more than 95 percent of U.S. international trade moves through the nation's ports and harbors, with about 50 percent of these goods being hazardous materials."

(NOAA PORTS, emphasis added; cf. Ports & Harbors). This implies a grave threat far more real and certain than a solar CME doing damage to the power grid:

IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a ...

(New Scientist, emphasis added). The chances of millions of Americans dying because of a CME are very remote.

But, compared to the certainty of it happening due to SLR, well, remember the quote in Section II above: "The Guardian, which had all along provided the best coverage, began its climate-change campaign, referring to the threat from climate change as 'the biggest story in the world'."

5 comments:

"What can you do as a consumer? A deeper understanding of where your food comes from is a first step. By buying from local producers, you contribute to strengthen the self-reliance of your region while reducing the dependence on food imports and at the same time minimizing the carbon footprint of your food. " (link)

Not to quibble since you have nailed the salient points about SLR, but using a "constant" 14.87% melt rate is insufficient to describe the actual circumstances. With regard to the WAIS in particular, how long can you "notch" out the base of a mountain before what is above you collapses catastrophically? "Melt-rate" alone does not account for the fractured and "plastic" nature inherent in ice regardless of its geographical location. When the "fractional" collapse of the WAIS occurs, the world will "wish" it was only ~3 feet. I see 6-10 feet prior to 2030. Hell, I'm surprised it hasn't happened, at least in part, already given that the grounding line in at least one region has retreated more than 26 miles. It is highly unlikely that that is the only place to see such, if not greater, retreat. Otherwise, nice article including the coinage.

You made good points about ice breaking up and flowing into the ocean, because that creates an immediate sea level rise before the ice ever melts.

The sea level rise story is about land ice either melting and the melt water reaching the sea, or the alternate, the ice sliding off the land into the sea causing immediate sea level rise before the ice ever melts.

The 14.87% is derived from the actual, real, historical doubling of ice volume loss in only 5 yrs.

It is an actual, real, non-imaginary value measured by the Cryosat-2 satellite data 2009-2013 (5 yrs, or 60 months) based on actual ice volume loss @Greenland and @Antarctica.

A measurement of 250 cu. km. ice volume loss in 2009 doubled to 500 cu. km. by the end of 2013.

It will be a "constant" value so long as ice loss continues to double each 5 yrs.

But I pointed out that the GRACE satellite may have shown it did not double again, but rather dropped to 12.25% from 14.87%.

Hanson, Sato (2012) use the exact same logic, in the sense that the rate of doubling in x years determines when (how soon) a 3 ft. SLR will take place:

"The increasing Greenland mass loss ... can be fit just as well by exponentially increasing annual mass loss, a behavior that Hansen (2005, 2007) argues could occur because of multiple amplifying feedbacks as an ice sheet begins to disintegrate. A 10-year doubling time would lead to 1 meter sea level rise by 2067 ... 2045 ... for 5-year doubling time and 2055 ... for a 7-year doubling time."

"The designer or architect of software that has these issues within its context can try to build that logic into the code itself, or can choose instead to have these scenarios and dynamics described by data.

Data which the software analyzes, derives values from, then injects those derived results into the other ongoing streams of computations and calculations.

IMO, the highly data driven model is the preferred method.

Because, as the situation becomes more clear and the data becomes better, the simulations will become more accurate without any change to the code.

The program logic (e.g. x + y - z) can be used in thousands of scenarios without changing the code, but instead merely updating the data values for x,y, and z.

So, I have built surge, delay, and acceleration logic into both the data entry exercises and in the calculation logic.

Processing that data, then using it in concert with the less-mysterious and more certain computations, becomes routine and more error free in the long run.

One can put expected surge, delay, and acceleration values into the database and it will be processed accordingly.

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